Updates

Suspect in Kim Jong Nam's Assassination Works for North Korean Embassy

Lim Se-young / Reuters

One of the suspects in the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of Kim Jong Un, is a senior official in the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian police said Wednesday. Police also identified another suspect as having ties to the North Korean airline. Both suspects are still in Malaysia and police are looking to question them. The suspects, police say, were trained to wipe a toxin on Kim’s face. They were then trained to wash their hands. Kim was killed last week at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Police say four other suspects have already flown back to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

Police Respond to Reports of an Active Shooter at a Houston Hospital

Ben Taub Hospital in Houston, Texas (Google Street View)

This story was updated at 5:45 p.m. ET

Police in Houston responded Tuesday to reports of an active shooter at Ben Taub Hospital. No injuries were reported. Chief Art Acevedo told reporters that authorities conducted two full searches of the medical facility and that no suspect or evidence of gunfire was found. The hospital has since resumed normal operation. More on the incident here

Riot Erupts in Stockholm Suburb

(TT News Agency / Reuters)

Police were pelted with rocks, about a dozen cars were burned, and shops vandalized Monday night in Rinkeby, a predominantly immigrant suburb of Stockholm. The violence erupted just days after President Trump appeared to link Sweden’s policy toward refugees and asylum-seekers to a spike in crime. The riot was reportedly prompted by the arrest of an individual on drug-related charges in the area earlier that evening. The riot, which lasted more than three hours, ended at about 12:15 a.m. Tuesday. A police spokesman toldDagens Nyheter, the Swedish newspaper, that an officer fired a shot, but no one was hit. No arrests were made. The incident, while relatively minor, comes just days after Trump’s remarks, which he attributed to a report on Fox News. Swedish authorities appeared puzzled by the president’s statements. In the refugee crisis that overwhelmed the European Union in 2015 and 2016, Sweden accepted more refugees per capita than any other member of the bloc. In 2015 alone, the country accepted 150,000 asylum-seekers. Nearly half of all Swedes say they believe refugees are more to blame for crime than other groups, but Swedish crime data do not show a significant increase in crime during this period. Trump maintains that an open-door policy toward migrants and refugees poses a security threat. Rinkeby is populated overwhelmingly by immigrants from Somalia and the Arab world, and their children. The area of about 16,000 residents has seen similar riots in the past, most notably in 2010 and 2013.

UPDATE: Milo Yiannopoulos Resigns from Breitbart

Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial Breitbart News editor, has been disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he was a scheduled speaker, after the emergence of a video that appears to show him condoning sex with underage boys. The video also cost Yiannopoulos his $250,000 book deal with Simon & Schuster. Brietbart, the conservative news site where Yiannopoulos is a senior editor, is reportedly reconsidering its relationship with him, as well. Yiannopoulos has positioned himself a champion of free speech, and it’s that view that won him conservative defenders in his many well-publicized controversies, including his remarks about Leslie Jones, the Ghostbusters star, which ultimately got him banned from Twitter. But his remarks on the Drunken Peasants Podcast, in which he said “some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships” may be appropriate, drew outrage. In a Facebook post, Yiannopoulos denied he supported pedophilia, saying it “disgusts” him. He added that he would hold a news conference at 3 p.m. Tuesday to address the controversy.

Azerbaijan President Names His Wife Vice President

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev walks with his wife, Mehriban, on March 18, 2009.(David Mdzinarishvili / Reuters)

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev appointed Tuesday his wife, Mehriban, the country’s first-ever vice president. The position was created in September through a constitutional referendum expanding presidential powers, including the ability to dissolve the country’s cabinet and an extension of the presidential term from five to seven years. Critics said the move cemented dynastic rule in the former Soviet republic, which was previously led by Aliyev’s father, Heydar Aliyev. Though the constitution does not specify the vice president’s role, he or she is expected to take over the president’s duties in the event the president cannot perform them. Mehriban Aliyev is from a family described in leaked U.S. State Department cables as “the single most powerful family in Azerbaijan.” She is not new to politics. In addition to being designated as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 2004, she was elected in 2005 as a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament (though she allegedly she did not attend sessions).

Under New Homeland Security Rules, More People Can Be Deported

(Jose Luis Gonzalez / Reuters)

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued rules Tuesday that expands the number of people who can be deported from the United States. Under the Obama administration, undocumented immigrants who had committed serious crimes were prioritized for removal. But the new rules authorize agents to deport any undocumented immigrant convicted of a criminal offense. Those now eligible for removal include people who “have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits” and those convicted of fraud. The rules authorize agents to immediately deport people who have been in the country for up to two years and located anywhere in the U.S. Previously, the immediate removals were restricted to those in the country for 14 days or fewer, and within 100 miles of the border. The DHS rules fulfill President Trump’s executive order that cracked down on illegal immigration—a longstanding campaign pledge. About 11 million people are believed to be in the U.S. illegally. During the eight years of the Obama administration, approximately 2.5 million people were removed from the U.S.—more than under any previous president.

Heterosexual Couple Loses Bid for Civil Partnership

The London Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday against a heterosexual couple seeking a civil partnership, an alternative to marriage that under British law applies only to same-sex couples. At issue is a claim by Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, a couple from London who in 2014 petitioned the government to enter into a civil partnership after determining that traditional marriage, which they described as “patriarchal,” was not for them. The 2004 Civil Partnership Act grants same-sex couples in Britain the right to enter into legal partnerships—a precursor to Britain’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2013. Despite the passage of same-sex marriage legislation, the civil partnership legislation was maintained, though it only extends to same-sex couples—an aspect of the law which Steinfeld and Keidan argued is discriminatory. In their two-to-one decision, the Court of Appeal judges ruled that though a ban on civil partnerships for heterosexual couples could be considered discriminatory and constitutes a violation of the couple’s privacy under the European Convention for Human Rights, the government should be given more time to consider the future of civil partnerships. Steinfeld and Keidan called the ruling disappointing, but said they will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

Bodies of 74 Migrants Wash Up on Libyan Coast

Volunteers recover the bodies of migrants near Zawiya, Libya, on February 21, 2017. (Libyan Red Crescent)

Seventy-four bodies were recovered Monday on the northwestern coast of Libya, the Libyan Red Crescent said Tuesday. The individuals, believed to be migrants bound for Italy, were discovered by Red Crescent volunteers on a beach in the coastal city of Zawiya. They are believed to have drowned after their rubber dinghy, which was found nearby, capsized. Flavio Di Giacomo, the spokesman for the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), said 110 people were onboard the dinghy when it departed Saturday from Sabratha, in western Libya. The remaining passengers have not been found. More than 5,000 migrants have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in 2016, making it the deadliest year for migrants on record. The IOM estimates that at least 270 people have drowned in the Mediterranean in 2017.

Jewish Centers Threatened, Gravesites Vandalized

The Anti-Defamation League [ADL] has reported bomb threats directed Monday at Jewish Community Centers across the U.S., calling them “alarming, disruptive, and [to be] … taken seriously.” ADL pointed out this is the fourth such incident this year. No one has claimed responsibility for the threats. The ADL’s statement came a day after more than 100 headstones at a Jewish cemetery near St. Louis, Missouri, were damaged. No one claimed responsibility. The threats prompted Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Trump, to say:

America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers. #JCC

In the last two months, the national JCC said its chapters in 27 states have received a total of 54 threatening calls. As my colleague Emma Green notes, “The calls may be a novel form of intimidation, but the context around them is not. American Jews are victims of more reported hate crimes than any other group in the United States, and have been subject to the majority of religiously motivated offenses every year since 1995, when the FBI first started reporting these statistics.” You can read more about the threats here.

Israeli soldier Elor Azaria is embraced Tuesday by his mother at the start of the sentencing hearing at a military court in Tel Aviv on February 21, 2017. (Reuters)

Sergeant Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier convicted last month of manslaughter for killing a wounded Palestinian attacker, was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison. At issue is the incident that occurred March 24, 2016, in the West Bank town of Hebron. As I wrote last month: “A Palestinian man, later identified as Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, and his friend, Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, stabbed an Israeli soldier. Qasrawi was shot and killed. Sharif was shot, wounded, and was lying immobile on the ground. Video from the scene showed Azaria, who was standing several meters away, cocking his gun, and shooting the Palestinian in the head, killing him. The Israeli Military Police arrested Azaria, 20, investigated the killing, and later charged him with manslaughter.” The sentence is likely to reopen the debate over Azaria’s actions. His supporters, including prominent Israeli minister, and defense attorneys argued the sergeant suspected Sharif, the 21-year-old Palestinian attacker, was trying to detonate a suicide vest, and, they point out, the incident occurred amid a spate of random knife and vehicular attacks by Palestinians against Israeli civilians and military personnel. But critics and the IDF pointed out his actions violated the military’s code of conduct. Indeed, a fellow IDF soldier testified that Azaria had told him the attacker “deserves to die.” The military court also handed Azaria a one-year suspended sentence. His attorneys said they’d appeal. Palestinians called the sentence insufficient.

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Like many people who spend too much time on Twitter, I watched with indignation Saturday morning as stories began appearing about a confrontation near the Lincoln Memorial between students from Covington Catholic High School and American Indians from the Indigenous Peoples March. The story felt personal to me; I live a few miles from the high school, and my son attends a nearby all-boys Catholic high school. I texted him right away, ready with a lesson on what the students had done wrong.

“They were menacing a man much older than them,” I told him, “and chanting ‘Build the wall!’ And this smirking kid blocked his path and wouldn’t let him leave.” The short video, the subject of at least two-thirds of my Twitter feed on Saturday, made me cringe, and the smirking kid in particular got to me: His smugness, radiating from under that red MAGA hat, was everything I wanted my teenagers not to be.

Mort Felix liked to say that his name, when read as two Latin words, meant “happy death.” When he was sick with the flu, he used to jokingly remind his wife, Susan, that he wanted Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” played at his deathbed. But when his life’s end arrived at the age of 77, he lay in his study in his Berkeley, California, home, his body besieged by cancer and his consciousness cradled in morphine, uninterested in music and refusing food as he dwindled away over three weeks in 2012. “Enough,” he told Susan. “Thank you, and I love you, and enough.” When she came downstairs the next morning, she found Felix dead.

During those three weeks, Felix had talked. He was a clinical psychologist who had also spent a lifetime writing poetry, and though his end-of-life speech often didn’t make sense, it seemed to draw from his attention to language. “There’s so much so in sorrow,” he said at one point. “Let me down from here,” he said at another. “I’ve lost my modality.” To the surprise of his family members, the lifelong atheist also began hallucinating angels and complaining about the crowded room—even though no one was there.

The death of Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t a galvanizing event, but the premature end of a movement that had only just begun.

“Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them.” Jesus’s rebuke to the Pharisees descended upon me on a cold January morning in 2017, in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. On that Monday, the national holiday dedicated to the man at whose memorial I stood, the capital bustled in anticipation of a more pressing political event. That’s why I was at the park, pondering this granite stone of hope, carved out of a mountain of despair. The memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. cast its shadow over me, its presence just as conflicted as those tombs.

As sure as Jesus’s words proved prescient about the adoption of Christianity in the empire that killed him, so too the modern-day legend of King writes itself in real time. In the official story told to children, King’s assassination is the transformational tragedy in a victorious struggle to overcome.

President Donald Trump is trapped. He shut the government to impose his will on the incoming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. That plan has miserably failed. Instead, Trump has found himself caught in the trap he supposed he had set for his opponents.

Now he is desperately seeking an exit.

Trump attempted Exit One on January 8.He spoke that evening to the nation from the Oval Office, hoping to mobilize public opinion behind him, pressing the Democratic leadership of the House to yield to him. That hope was miserably disappointed. Surveys post-speech found that Trump had swayed only 2 percent of TV viewers. In the 10 days since the speech, Trump’s approval ratings have dipped to about the lowest point in his presidency. The supposedly solid Trump base has measurably softened.

The civil-rights leader is now celebrated as a modern founding father, a celebration that gives those who oppose his policy agenda a claim to his legacy.

Every year, on the third Monday in January, people play their hand at the same game. “What would Martin Luther King Jr. think?” becomes an unwritten essay prompt for op-eds, a topic of speeches and sermons, a call to action, and a societal rebuke. In this annual pageant, there are few who would ever mark themselves as living in opposition to the legacy of King, even as they work to dismantle it.

It was only natural that Vice President Mike Pence would quote King in defense of President Donald Trump’s decision to continue the ongoing government shutdown until he receives full funding for a border wall. “One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was: ‘Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy’,” Pence said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, citing King’s famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. “You think of how he changed America. He inspired us to change through the legislative process, to become a more perfect union. That’s exactly what President Trump is calling on Congress to do: Come to the table in the spirit of good faith.”

Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.

On January 20, 2017,Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.

Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.

“We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.”

In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations.

This prompted King to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent call for “constructive, nonviolent tension” to force an end to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil-rights movement. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century. The Atlantic published it in the August 1963 issue.

She beat George W. Bush on Social Security privatization, and she’ll beat Trump on the wall.

Democrats sometimes portray themselves as high-minded and naive—unwilling to play as rough as the GOP. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is, once again, proving that self-image wrong. She’s not only refusing Donald Trump’s demand for a border wall. She’s trying to cripple his presidency. And she may well succeed.

Pelosi’s strategy resembles the one she employed to debilitate another Republican president: George W. Bush. Bush returned to Washington after his 2004 reelection victory determined to partially privatize Social Security. “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital,” he told the press, “and I intend to spend it.” Bush’s plan contained two main elements. The first was convincing the public that there was a crisis. Social Security, he declared in his 2005 State of the Union address, “is headed toward bankruptcy.” The second was persuading Democrats to offer their own proposals for changing it.

[Please see Updates at the end of this post.] I don’t know who the young man in the MAGA hat in this photo is. And I don’t care to know.

His name, which the internet will inevitably turn up, really doesn’t matter. It matters to his parents, of course—and to his teachers. I hope they will be reflective, and I know they should be ashamed: of this smirking young man and the scores of other (nearly all white) students from a Catholic school in Kentucky. Today, on the National Mall in Washington, they apparently mocked, harassed, and menaced a Native American man who had fought for the United States in Vietnam and who today represented both the U.S. and his Omaha nation with poise, courage, and dignity.

Rudy Giuliani, on the Sunday shows, says the president never told Michael Cohen to lie about pursuing Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 campaign.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who’s representing President Donald Trump for free, is keeping up his public-relations war on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. In a pair of appearances on Sunday-morning talk shows, he stuck to the playbook: Attack Mueller’s credibility, and insist that all of Trump’s statements and actions were legal. Giuliani admits a fair amount but always insists that no crime was committed.

The president’s attorney once again said that discussions about a Trump Tower Moscow project may have continued as late as November 2016, contrary to the president’s previous statements that he had nothing to do with Russia, where he had longsought to do business. On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Giuliani said talks may have gone on “as far as October, November” 2016. That matches his statement last month that Trump’s written answers to Mueller’s questions “covered up to November 2016.”